


A Survey of Red

by mechanonymouse



Category: 221B Baker Towers, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: A Study in Scarlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 09:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17241446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse
Summary: Yahya Sultana's search for a flatmate to help cover the rising costs of renting 221 Bakers Towers introduces him to Sherlock Holmes.





	A Survey of Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keerawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/gifts).



Baker Towers isn’t a large or particularly impressive set of tower blocks. It squats like a three headed grey monstrosity poking it’s pitted heads out of a sink estate in the center of some of London’s most desirable real estate. Its heads collared together by walkways connecting the towers and chained to London by the half built skyways stretching out from it. Yahya had grown up on the second floor of the first tower in a legally overcrowded flat with his five siblings, grandparents, parents and uncle when he wasn’t in prison but it was a non-adapted flat on the sixth floor of the third tower he was offered after his discharge both from hospital and the army with nothing to show for his time but a limp and a screaming case of PTSD. 

221 Baker Towers was as grey inside as the estate and towers were outside without the green of weeds pushing through cracks in the concrete or brown-red rust stains to break it up. It was the first unfurnished flat Yahya had lived in and while a veteran’s charity had provided a second-hand fridge in good condition and a local charity a bed with a mattress most the flat was still empty with bare bulbs casting harsh shadows across the rooms. The windows were single glazed and poorly fitted. When the wind blew in the right direction gusts pushed their way through chilling the flat and they rattled when the wind speed was high enough. The door to the balcony didn’t fully close and made the living room a greenhouse in the summer. Yahya could never afford to heat the place to a comfortable temperature so he lived in layers and huddled under blankets in his bed when he was too cold. The vivid vermillion of the fleece a sharp contrast to the greys, beiges and yellowed whites of the room but they were £2 a blanket not £6 for a more pleasant colour.

A combination of the bedroom tax, universal credit and improving health had him looking to illegally sublet the second room. He wasn’t the first occupant of the flat to do so from the flimsy yale locks on both bedroom doors and the metal “A” and “B” attached to the doors and poorly painted over with stark white gloss paint that cast the yellow nicotine stains on the original paint into sharp contrast. 

Mrs Hudson from three doors down had suggested Sherlock. Like Yahya, he was born in these towers but there was a big enough age gap between them and the crowds they had run in different enough that they had never interacted. Yahya would not have been surprised if Sherlock had no idea who he was but Sherlock’s reputation preceded him. He’d been one of Miss Adler’s boys at Secondary, another bright shining star who never went anywhere than Wandsworth or the crem. Prior to seeing him about the flat on Mrs Hudson’s insistence, the last Yahya knew about him was that he had been taken in ranting and raving about a master criminal on the main quad off his head on smack. Sherlock was both what Yahya had been expecting and not. His skin had a sickly grey cast to it and his teeth were yellowed but his clothes were neat, clean and tidy and his hair a clean, shiny mop of tight ringlets. He fidgeted, picking at his cuticles and moving with the sharp agitation Yahya was used to of a junky needing a fix but his speech was clear and coherent and he handed over the deposit and first month’s rent in cash without quibble.

The first morning after Sherlock moved in Yahya woke as normal, sweaty with fear, throat hoarse from screaming and contorted in pain. As usual he forced himself through a vicious physio routine, the crutches he hadn’t needed in months leaning against the wall and cane he no longer needed inside his own flat pushing him through the pain. Emerging from his room he found a dusky pink ragged armchair which might once have been floral patterned had appeared in the main room along with rickety table in faux mahogany particle board that was covered in newspapers that Sherlock was stooped over. 

“Tea first.” Yahya thought continuing through to the kitchen, his gait slightly unsteady after his physio without his cane. Nothing about the kitchen had obviously changed with the acquisition of a flatmate. There were still open gaps between the counters for a stove and washing machine he couldn’t afford new or rented and hadn’t been able to get second hand or from charity yet. A kettle on the way to the fridge which he lifted to check the water level and switched on automatically. The microwave and the rice cooker sitting on top of it, presents from his family when he moved in, sitting on the counter with the fridge tucked underneath. The slim contents of the fridge hadn’t changed since he put the leftovers his mum had insisted on sending him home with last night away. The last dregs of the milk bottle sat alone in the door - just enough for tea or a very dry bowl of cereal, half a slice of dried out cheese looked up at him alone from the bottom shelf and the plastic box of dahl sat on the top shelf. Taking the milk he gave up on the fridge and and opened the cabinet above. Two slices of white bread - stale but not yet mouldy, a plastic jug of rice, a can of value baked beans, and his one luxury, Nutella. 

With a happy smile he wandered out of the kitchen holding his plate of Nutella sandwiches and tea. “I’m going to the shops today.” Yahya said. “Do you need anything?”

Sherlock startled violently. “What? I- Uh-” He blinked pushing the sleeves of his shirt up and then rapidly back down. He looked up from the newspaper page he had been inspecting and focused on Yahya’s sandwich. “Oh, food. I never eat while working on a case.” He said reflexively and then, “But- Milk, tea, bread, peanut butter and oranges.” He said reading from a crumpled piece of paper he pulled from his trouser pocket and handed over to Yahya.

Stuffing the note in his pocket with his own shopping list Yahya asked. “What’s with all the newspapers?”

“Joseph Drebber was killed in the one publicly accessible part of the Strata Building that isn’t covered by CCTV. Mohammad Hussain, a security guard, has been picked for it.” Sherlock replied. “His wife says he didn’t do it and wants me to finger who did it. The Fed in charge - Detective Constable Lestrade - is alright. He took Hussain in cos that’s what he’s gotta do but he won’t fix him up.” Sherlock gestured encompassing the newspapers strewn across the table newly occupying Yahya’s previously empty living room. “This what I have to go on. Mostly reiteration of this -” He pointed at a red topped local newspaper. “- bulked out with extracts of this interview with Drebber’s wife.” A printout from an American newspaper. “Hussain’s statement from his solicitor,” Another printout, “and the cleaner’s description of the scene.” An email on a battered unbranded tablet. Sherlock spun and began to stalk back and forth across the room. “I’m missing something.” He said gesturing wildly. “The first reports were of an unknown unmarried man found dead in the Strata building. The security guard arrested. By the morning that had been updated to a married American and his wife had released her very polished statement about what wonderful man he had been.” Yahya placed his sandwich on the table and leant back against the wall to watch fascinated. On his next pass Sherlock absentmindedly picked up the half eaten sandwich. “Hussain didn’t see Drebber come in. His alibi is that he left his lunch at home and he stepped away from his station to collect it from his brother.” Sherlock took a bite. “But the brother is a flight attendant, was on a 4am flight that morning and has not yet come back to the country to be interviewed.” He took another bite of Yahya’s sandwich.

“So your friend will be fine?” Yahya asked. “I mean when his brother comes back.”

Sherlock blinked. “Friend? Oh-” He discarded the remainder of the sandwich on one of the newspapers. “He won’t be convicted if it goes to trial but there’s a two year wait at the County Court and he’ll lose his job. Like I said, Lestrade won’t put the boot in but they’ll charge him tomorrow without verifying his alibi if I can’t show someone else was involved.”

“Why’d they say Drebber wasn’t married originally?” Yahya asked, “He had a wife.”

Sherlock flicked through his papers. “No ring or no marks indicating he habitually wore one. Nothing indicating a wife in the personal effects found on the body, none of which had been taken - not even the £200 cash in small notes he was carrying - but he wasn’t carrying ID.” Picked up the tablet. “A wedding ring was found by the cleaner and handed in. A woman’s wedding ring from the size and cheap - 10 carat gold, slim and plain. An American ring or it would have been lower carat. Nothing to do with Drebber.” Sherlock span, disappearing into his room with crash as the door slammed behind him leaving the table a mess.

Sighing Yahya cleared the discarded sandwich. There was no sign of his new flatmate emerging from the room anytime soon and it didn’t seem he would be offended if Yahya left, so he suffered the intermittent hot water and slippery bath before taking himself off to the shops. It was the start of the month and he thought he would treat himself to enough internet to watch the football on the second hand tablet Haris had given him.

He returned home, the shopping bag bashing against his cane and trying to trip him with every step and his injured leg muscles screaming with pain. The bus had been on diversion so he’d had to walk from the other side of the estate, nothing he or Sherlock needed had been cheap at Asda so he’d had to go to Lidl and Iceland as well, and all six of the towers’ lifts were out of order so he had to climb the seven flights of stairs to 221. By the time he limped his way to the front door he was almost in tears of frustration. Two years ago he would have run this in a full pack after a hike and not been out of breath. Two years ago it wouldn’t have taken him most of the day to pick up food and top up the electricity and his phone. Now he was shaking and barely managing to push himself through the next step. Before he could give his body the rest it so dearly wanted he would have to put the food away. He didn’t have the money to let the milk or cheese go off and he doubted Sherlock did either.

Entering the living room, rather than the peaceful emptiness he had come to expect of his flat he found a police officer and Sherlock arguing. The officer was in plain clothes but still Yahya recognised him as a Fed on sight. Sherlock’s submissive and open body language, the clear and careful way he was responding to the officer’s questions, his voice staying level and and tone getting more polite and ingratiating as the officer’s got louder and more forceful. If Yahya had a choice he would have walked away. Nothing good ever came from interacting with the Met but it was his flat. He had to go in.

“The ring isn’t Drebber’s or his wife’s.” Sherlock was saying. “Nor is it Hussain or Sara’s” The Fed looked confused. “Hussain’s wife” Sherlock clarified fast. “So, it belonged to the murderer and he cared to try and get it back.”

Carefully Yahya sidled past Sherlock staying out of arm’s reach of the Fed in to the kitchen leaving the door open behind him. “It could have been dropped by anyone.” The Fed said.

“It could.” Sherlock said. “But, Lestrade, your own officers state that a drunken man tried to enter the scene before CID arrived and security at the Strata report that a cab driven by a man of the same description was seen loitering near the building until the scene was cleared. When the ring was listed on the Strata building’s website as lost a woman driven by the same cab came to collect it. She was hired by the cab driver and is willing to give a statement to that effect. The cab license number belongs to Jefferson Hope. Previous residence in the same city in Utah as Joseph Drebber. His wife was killed in a hit and run two years ago by a car the same make, model and colour as the one Drebber drove at the time. No one was ever charged.” He handed Lestrade a pile of paper.

Hurumphing Lestrade took the papers barely glancing at them. “And you think this clears your mate?”

“I think it gives you reason to wait until you can interview Hamid Hussain before charging Mohammad.” Sherlock said, his speech far slower than usual like he was picking each word with purpose. “And to check out Jefferson Hope.”

Lestrade stomped out of the door without comment slamming it behind him so hard the wall shook. Sherlock slid in to the ancient armchair breathing deeply. “Sorry Yahya.” He said as Yahya left the kitchen. “I didn’t think he’d come here.”

Two days later a box arrived to the flat full of piping hot, bright red, Jollof rice, spicy enough to make Yahya want to drink Lassi with it and sweet treats neither he nor Sherlock could have justified buying. “From Sara.” Sherlock explained as they sat on a tatty old tartan blanket to eat it in a flat that for the first time since Yahya had moved in felt like home.

“So you don’t get paid for…” Yahya gestured vaguely.

“Sara won’t. Some do.” Sherlock said. “Some do favours and sometimes Mycroft sends me work.”


End file.
